Mary Elizabeth Winstead

Mary Elizabeth Winstead is a SAG Award- and Young Artist Award-nominated actress. She has been called a scream queen, à la [[jamie-lee-curtis]], because of her roles in such horror films as ''Final Destination 3'', ''Death Proof'', and ''Black Christmas''.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead is a SAG Award- and Young Artist Award-nominated actress. She has been called a scream queen, à la Jamie Lee Curtis, because of her roles in such horror films as Final Destination 3, Death Proof, and Black Christmas. She has branched out into other genres, including comedy (Sky High), drama (Bobby), and action (Live Free Or Die Hard). So, pretty much, she’s still in the same boat as Jamie Lee Curtis.

Winstead was born in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. When she was five, her family moved to Sandy, Utah, a hotbed for staring at paint. Her interest in performing began to emerge with interests in ballet and acting. Hoping to become a ballerina, at the age of eleven, she received the opportunity to study dance in a summer program of the prestigious Joffrey Ballet School in New York City. Winstead ended up appearing on Broadway during Donny Osmond’s successful run of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, which would have fulfilled her life-long dream, if she were born in the ‘50s.

She began her acting career in the late ‘90s, guest starring in episodes of Touched by an Angel and Promised Land, before being cast in Passions, which was not another Christian-themed spin-off of Touched by an Angel, but a soap opera about sinfully hot people.

She got her big break in the feature film, Sky High, which provided exposure, and she landed a role in Final Destination 3. She then played a substantial role in the film, Bobby, a love letter to the politics of Robert F. Kennedy. She and her castmates were nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award for best ensemble cast. The same could not be said for Final Destination 3’s cast, as judges thought a nod would bring horrific, Rube Goldberg-inspired deaths to the awards ceremony.

In 2007, she appeared in a pair of high-profile event films. Quentin Tarantino cast her as a well-intentioned, but vapid and naïve actress in his high-speed segment of Grindhouse called Deathproof, his half of a double-billed feature. She wears nothing but a cheerleader outfit in the film. You should rent it (available on DVD and High Definition). That same summer, hot off the heels of its release, Winstead received another shot at action as Lucy McClane in Live Free or Die Hard. The plus side to the film was that her father was the legendary John McClane. The downside: having to generate chemistry between her and the Mac Guy.